Project #3: Open-Source Software

DESCRIPTION (PART I)
The open-source software is called Claroline. Though it is specifically designed for those teaching online courses, it can be helpful for essentially any teacher, and particularly English teachers. On the homepage of the Claroline information website it states that its aim is to help educators with the following: write a course description, publish documents in any format, administer private and public forums, develop learning paths, create groups of students, prepare online exercises, manage an agenda with tasks and deadlines, publish announcements, propose assignments to be handed in online, see the statistics of users activity, and use the wiki to write collaborative documents.

I see this software being especially beneficial to English teachers so they can give students access to readings (publishing documents), grammar or vocabulary exercises (preparing online exercises), allowing students access to paper prompts and to turn in long papers online instead of printing them out (proposing assignments to be handed in online), and to let classmates help each other in research for research-based papers (wikis). All of these can help to enhance English students learning whether they are taking an online or ground class. To look into and download Claroline go to: http://www.claroline.net/


TUTORIAL (PART II)

Following are some tutorials on (1) getting started, (2) creating an exercise, and (3) creating an assignment. Click on the URLs to watch the video or look at the picture for help. Enjoy!:
http://www.claroline.net/dlarea/docs/videos/en/create_user_account.htm



http://www.claroline.net/dlarea/docs/videos/en/Create%20_an_exercise.htm


http://www.claroline.net/dlarea/docs/videos/en/Create_an_assignment.htm

















REFLECTION (PART III)
In order to show how to use the tutorials, I searched for videos on how to use the software. Luckily, I found several separate tutorials that showed how to use specific tools within the more broad spectrum of Claroline tools. Because I will be teaching English, I tried to pick those most applicable to English teachers. You will notice that I also took screenshots as the tutorials were playing. Hopefully, the screenshots I took were in the best place possible to show how to start using the tools without having to watch the whole video. In general what I tried to do was: write a description of the software, give visual aids of the software being used (i.e. screenshots) and hyperlinks to the full Claroline tutorials themselves. I tried to give a variety of instruction on how to use the software. I honestly believe it is a good program for English teachers, and it is likely I will go back to this software as a professional teacher.

Assignment #7

1.I have learned how to use technology within the domain of teaching, specifically English teaching, by learning how to make a class website that includes assignments, syllabus, calendar, instructional videos etc.
2.I was able to collaborate with classmates through PLE's like blogs, websites, RSS feeds, and GoogleWave.
3.As far as using technology in the classroom, I pretty dead set on having a class website now. I think that it makes things much more convenient for students and cuts down on lost and cluttered papers.
4.This class taught me a lot of options for internet usage in general but specifically in teaching. And though I know Ben does not get paid to endorse Google, I can see why he likes their programs so much. I learned a lot of very simple, user-friendly programs to use for classes. Specifically, I really like GoogleSites, GoogleCalendar, and GoogleDocuments.
5.As I said earlier, I am now positive that I will use GoogleSites for a class website in the future. I am glad I learned how to embed things onto the website as well. That makes the website usable.

Assignment #6

To start looking for free software for my third project, I typed in "open source software for education." What I found was a website full of different softwares that can be used in the classroom. It is called Schoolforge.net and it has a link labeled "Software".
Here are some of the options. Crossword Builder makes crossword puzzles that can be adjusted online for whatever subject you need to teach. I think that this software looks simple enough but I am not sure how useful a crossword puzzle activity can be.
Canorus is software that generally helps with musical scores but can be helpful in note taking. Students could find this easy and helpful though I was always a person who liked taking hand notes because I felt like I had more control over what I was writing.
Last week I learned some things about Internet safety. I am pretty cautious when it comes to internet privacy and try to limit how much I post online already. However, I think it is a good reminder that any website that asks for too much peripheral information can still be unsafe. If predators connect all the dots they can still find out plenty of information about you. Similarly, you can make your email address a picture icon so that "spiders" can't scrape your email address.

Assignment #5 (Continued)

In the end, I used iChat to chat with my mother. She has a Mac as well and I taught her how to use it so we can stay connected while I am away at school. It was difficult to get started but it is overall a very convenient way to talk.
There are still challenges, however. It can be delayed, blank out, or be hard to hear but for the most part, it beats talking on the phone.
I could see this being helpful for teaching where a student has to be absent or where a teacher is far away but decides to give the students their money's worth. It seems like something that could be better used in the later grades.
Oh, and my movie is finished.

Assignment #5

For this assignment I decided to try gmail video chat because I have never used it before. I own a Mac and have used iChat. It's nice to try something new. I already downloaded the tools to use google chat.

Project #2 Instructional Video